Adam cursed. The underground facility he’d funded through private investors with the promise of converting them to GTECHs wasn’t ready yet, nor had they gotten their hands on the serum to mass produce it. Perhaps there was a bright side to this. His brother had been clinging to humanity’s goodness, the same humanity that was about to cage the GTECHs and throw away the key. Perhaps even exterminate them, which is what he would tell his followers, accurate or not. Even Caleb would see the writing on the wall that humans corrupted everything they touched. It was us or them—and the stronger group, the GTECHs, would prevail.
“My following at Groom Lake runs deep,” he said, and not just with GTECHs. The human soldiers sent to battle in their natural, vulnerable form, resented being denied GTECH conversion. “We’ll have no problem seizing control.”
“The army will bring in reinforcements,” she warned.
“The army will fear aggressive action that might alert the humans to an alien takeover,” he said. “Any attempts to stop us will be weak, and we will prevail.”
“Adam—”
His fingers wrapped around the back of her neck and pulled her close. “Do not fear, my beauty. Soon you will be the queen of a new nation that will grow and prosper. No one will stop us.”
“No one will stop us,” she whispered.
After eating their barbecue feast, an attempt to watch a movie was waylaid by passion. Hours of passion. Hours of wonderful, amazing passion. Cassandra lay curled on Michael’s chest in the middle of a blanket on the living room floor, naked and only half-sated, the rain having long ago passed. She felt warm and wonderful inside, and she knew this was the moment—the time to share her past and tell him about her mother. She couldn’t explain why, but she needed to do this.
But before she got the chance, he rolled her onto her back, his long raven hair tickling her cheeks, those black eyes piercing hers with emotion. “Cassandra,” he said softly. “Do you know how much I—?” The wind gusted through the window, permeating the curtains and splattering rain onto the tiled kitchen floor.
Michael went ramrod stiff, the confession he’d been about to make lost to the interruption, leaving Cassandra hanging on his words. A second gust of wind shot through the window, unnatural, like a demand. That gust confirmed in her mind that whatever was happening was created by “someone,” not the “something” of Mother Nature.
Further confirmation came with Michael’s reaction. “Stay here,” he ordered, not waiting for a reply. This was the soldier she knew as part of him, and that soldier wasn’t in “welcome” mode. He was dressed in seconds and out the door, pulling it shut behind him.
Cassandra slipped on her tank top and shorts, foregoing her shoes out of urgency. Unexplainable dread twisted in her gut, a sense of unease inside her that pulsed with life as she peered through the curtains. Adam and Michael stood outside facing each other, the wind whistling briskly around them—and as she had discovered these past months, the wind did not move, certainly did not whistle, unless Michael allowed it to do so. No one else had that power. Until now, she’d assumed his fellow GTECHs knew that, but she wasn’t so sure. Because either Michael was concealing his ability, or he was too pissed to bother with controlling the wind. Or both. Adam set Michael on edge. She’d seen it when they were together, sensed it with the simple mention of Adam’s name. Caleb was another story. Michael’s admiration for him was clear.
Michael knew Adam was X2 positive, and he knew Caleb was not. If Michael knew that he himself was X2 positive, he’d think he was like Adam, and she wasn’t going to let that happen. As much as she feared losing the hard-earned trust between them, she had come to know she loved Michael, too much to see him condemn himself unfairly. The wind shifted, pressing against the window. It was then that Caleb appeared, and Cassandra felt a sense of relief that was short-lived. Even without sound, it was clear from the body language and expressions that while Michael listened intently, Adam and Caleb were in a heated exchange. When finally Caleb and Adam departed, Michael walked back to her, his face grim, far more turbulent than the storm now passed; she felt her stomach twist with the certainty that something was terribly wrong.
Her hand shook as she opened the door to greet him. “What’s wrong? What’s going on?” She moved back into the kitchen to allow him to enter. He stayed on the patio, distant, and not just physically. “Michael?”
He grabbed her then and pulled her to him, hands laced in her hair. “No matter what happens to me,” he said, “do not tell anyone you wear my mark.”
“What?” she gasped. “Why? What’s going on?”
“Promise me, Cassandra. No matter what. No matter how things seem, you stay silent.”
“I…okay. Yes. We already agreed I—” He kissed her then, swallowing her objections in a deep, passionate, I-really-care-about-you, but I’m-saying-good-bye kind of kiss that ended with him fading into the wind.
Her eyes prickled, dampness clinging to her cheeks. Because wherever Michael had gone, he didn’t believe he was coming back.
CHAPTER FOUR
Monday morning, dressed for work, her purse on her shoulder, Cassandra was in heavy pursuit of her keys, which she’d somehow misplaced, when she stepped into the slim hallway leading to the living room and stopped dead in her tracks. The scent, so uniquely Michael, laced the air.
A memory took shape in the shadowy recesses of her mind—of waking up with a tingle at the back of her neck that she’d only recently started to feel when he was near. Had he been here? While she slept? She shook her head. No, that was nuts. She hadn’t seen or heard from him since Saturday night. She glanced at the clock on the wall and shook off the memory, cringing with her tardiness. She’d arranged to have ten lab techs begin a round of brainwave testing on the soldiers as of mid-morning, and she still had preparations to do.
Another ten minutes of searching for her keys, and she gave in and called Kelly to come get her. “You lost your keys?” Kelly said. “How very unCassandra-like of you.”
Five minutes later, Kelly pulled her blue Camry to the curb and shoved the passenger’s door open.
“Something is going on,” Cassandra said the minute she slid inside, as she started replaying the events of the weekend.
“Adam’s involvement is enough to make me nervous,” Kelly said, cutting her a worried look. “I don’t care what your profiles say about the man being within normal aggressive range. When you look into his eyes, pure evil looks back. I am betting these brainwave tests of yours are going to be far more revealing than discovering the X2 gene has been.”
Cassandra’s cell phone rang, and she fished it out of her purse, silently wishing for a call from Michael. Instead, it was one of her staff members. The call was quick, and she hung up more worried than ever.
“Okay, Kelly. Now I know something is wrong. My staff received a memo that all soldiers scheduled for the brainwave testing were indefinitely reassigned.”
“Reassigned?” Kelly quaked, whipping into the main parking lot. “What does ‘reassigned’ mean? As in another military base? The GTECHs?”
“I don’t know,” Cassandra said, motioning across the parking lot as she spotted her father in deep conversation with a ranking officer. “But I intend to find out.” The minute the car stopped, Cassandra was out of the door, purse over her shoulder. “I’ll meet you in the lab.” She slammed the door and took off across the pavement, her black high-heels pounding across the concrete slab.
“Father!” she yelled, making sure he knew she was here and wasn’t about to let him get away.
With a barely-there glance over his shoulder, he offered a short wave of acknowledgement and continued speaking to the officer. About the time Cassandra reached the two men, the officer saluted and then headed across the parking lot.
“I’m on my way to a meeting,” her father said. “Whatever you need is going to have to wait.” He started walking away, dismissing her.
She double-stepped
to keep up with him, firming her voice. “I just heard that some of the GTECHs in my studies have been reassigned. Why wasn’t I told?”
“You’ll get a briefing when everyone else does,” he said, quickening his pace.
She grabbed his arm, drawing him to a halt. “Don’t dismiss me like I’m one of your soldiers.” He’d apparently forgotten she could be as dogmatic as her mother when she wanted answers. “You brought me here to do a job. I need to know what’s going on to do it. I can quit. They can’t.”
“You try my nerves, Cassandra. You are my daughter, but you are also an employee of the base who will get the information as I deem it necessary.”
“I can’t do my job without proper communication. I had expensive, specialized testing scheduled this morning that just got flushed down the drain.”
“Duty first, Cassandra,” he said tightly. “I’ve taken command of a secondary base which required immediate high-level security. You’ll find a list of soldiers removed from evaluation status is already in your inbox.”
“How many soldiers?” she demanded.
“Fifty.”
That was one-fourth of the GTECHs. “What about our research? We don’t know enough about the GTECHs to simply send them off to duty like any other soldier.”
“Dr. Chin left this morning with the troops,” he said. “He’ll oversee the scientific monitoring and research of the GTECH program. Dr. Peterson will be promoted in his absence.”
Nothing about this felt right. “You relocated Michael, didn’t you?”
“He met certain requirements for the assignment, yes.”
Yet Michael hadn’t said he was being relocated. Michael would have said good-bye. “What requirements?”
“He’s a cold-hearted killer,” he said. “Never blinks an eye at a command, no matter how bloody it may be.”
She all but visibly flinched at both the tone and content of the statement. He knew she was seeing Michael and had made his disapproval known, but now he was going too far. “If you have something to say to me, Father, say it, but don’t involve Michael. And don’t judge him for doing what you order him to do.”
“I don’t remember saying I was judging him at all,” he replied dryly. “I simply answered your question. You wanted to know what requirements Michael met for his relocation, to which I replied—he’s a cold-hearted killer.”
He’d said it again and added even more bite. Her mind tracked back to the night before. To Michael’s words. No matter what happens to me, do not tell anyone you wear my mark. And considering Caleb and Adam’s visit had sparked the warning, she was beginning to piece this together. “Were Caleb and Adam also relocated?”
“Adam, yes,” he stated. “Caleb, no.”
That horrible feeling in her chest spread to her stomach. Adam, the man Kelly had just referred to as “evil,” had gone with Michael. Caleb had not. And now her father was basically accusing Michael of enjoying the act of killing. “What have you done, Father?”
The question was swallowed as the humid Nevada wind rushed against them—unnatural, violent—a second before Adam Rain solidified in front of them and dropped a limp body onto the hood of the Jeep.
“He tried to lock me in a cage,” Adam declared, glaring at her father, black eyes framed by sculpted bone structure. His full lips twisted in contempt. “That’s a good way to piss me off.”
Shock held Cassandra, eyes riveted on the broken man on the truck, blood trickling from his mouth. The wind lifted again, tangling the loose hair around Cassandra’s neckline and throwing dirt and rock from the nearby desert terrain at her feet. Relief washed over Cassandra as the mark on the back of her neck tingled with the certainty that Michael approached. Michael could control Adam, where her father could not.
Michael appeared beside Adam, and four more GTECHs formed a V formation behind the two of them—as if they were standing behind their leaders, as if Michael stood with Adam. Cassandra rejected the warning sizzling down her spine. Michael worked with Adam, ran missions with Adam. To see them together was not abnormal. But there was that warning, growing stronger by the second. And he wasn’t looking at her. Why wasn’t he looking at her?
“Michael?” she said, needing him to look at her, to reassure her everything was okay.
“Go inside, Cassandra,” her father ordered.
“Yes,” Adam agreed. “Go inside, Cassandra. That is, unless you want to watch your father bleed to death.”
Cassandra’s gaze rocketed to Michael, and she stepped toward him. The wind gusted, as if in response, pushing her backwards several steps. She stumbled and somehow regained her footing, only to be pushed backwards yet again.
Her chest tightened as she saw her father step toe-to-toe with Adam, and desperately she searched for help, finding that the parking lot had turned into a ghost town. Everything about this was wrong. Everything spelled disaster in the process. She forced herself to turn and run toward the elevator, telling herself Michael would protect her father, Michael would handle Adam. She had to warn the others on the base, to call for backup. She punched the elevator button and refused to look behind her, unable to face the prospect that her father might be lying dead on the ground.
“Michael will save him,” she said, the verbal assurance allowing her to rush into the open elevator.
The minute the car hit basement level, she charged out of the doors. “Help! I need help!” But there was no one where there were usually many, and the red emergency phone was ripped from the wall.
“Kelly,” she whispered and took off running, her heart in her throat. Please let Kelly be okay.
Cassandra burst through the doors of the lab where she’d told Kelly she would meet her and stopped dead in her footsteps. Ava Lane, with whom Cassandra had never shared more than an uncomfortable greeting, stood alone, arms crossed in front of her full bosom, the glint of evil in her pale green eyes enough to send a chill down Cassandra’s spine.
“In a hurry?” she asked.
“Late for work,” Cassandra said, trying to act nonchalant as she started to rush past Ava, with one intention—to call Caleb. Michael trusted Caleb.
“At one point I thought you were Michael’s intended Lifebond,” Ava said. “But no Lifebond would keep the secret you kept from him. I would certainly never keep any secret from Adam.”
The biting accusation, along with the obvious proclamation that she was Adam’s Lifebond, stopped Cassandra in her tracks. She and Ava were nearly face-to-face now, only a few steps separating them before Cassandra would have stepped around the lab table. “What are you talking about?”
“Michael knows he’s X2 positive,” she said. “And he knows you knew and didn’t tell him. Did you know your father was going to lock him away because of it?”
“No,” she said, her throat dry. “No. That’s not what was supposed to happen. My father—”
“—should be thanked,” she said. “He gave us a reason to act. Once we’ve claimed control of the base, we will begin to create a new world, free of weak, useless humans like yourself. It is the nature of evolution, a chance for a better Zodius race.”
Cassandra pressed her hand to her temple, willing herself to think logically, to remain calm. Again, she replayed Michael’s words in her mind. No matter what happens, do not tell anyone you wear my mark. It had been a warning—about this, about Adam and Ava.
Ava’s cell phone buzzed, and she glanced at the screen. “Darn,” she said. “Adam needs me. I was really hoping to stick around for the special treat Michael has lined up for you.” She laughed. “Bet you can’t wait to find out what it is.” She waggled her fingers and headed for the door.
The instant Ava was gone, Cassandra bolted for her office to call for help, only to find her phone and computer ripped from the wall. She raced around her desk to the bottom drawer where she kept the Glock her father had taught her to shoot when she was twelve, only to come up dry again. The drawer was open, the gun gone.
She leaned on the desk, defeated. “Think Cassandra. Think. What now?”
The mark on her neck began to tingle, and she reacted immediately. “Michael,” she yelled, certain he hadn’t betrayed her. Certain he was here to save her.
But when she rounded the doorway and brought the lab into view, her hope and her world crumbled at her feet. Michael was, indeed, there, but he wasn’t alone. He had her father in front of him, and he held a blade at his throat. Blood trickling from an open wound, no doubt the method used to keep him from warning her.
“Michael,” she whispered, her eyes prickling with unshed tears. “Please don’t do this.”
The plea had barely left her lips when Michael lifted a gun and pointed it at her. Time stood still as she stared down at the tranquilizer in her arm, and then the world that had crumbled went black.
Cassandra woke abruptly, climbing through the darkness of a deep sleep to jerk to a sitting position, quickly registering that she was in a bed, steel rails on either side of her. An IV hung from her arm. Green curtains covered the windows to the right. She was in the hospital.
“Easy, sweetie,” came Kelly’s gentle voice, as her friend rushed out of the nearby restroom. “I knew you’d wake up while I was in there.”
Kelly. Kelly was here. Cassandra cut through the tangled memories weaving through the blank spots of her mind. Michael’s betrayal. The knife. “My father!” she exclaimed urgently, adrenaline rocketing her heart monitor into a series of fast beeps. “Is my father—?”
“Alive and unharmed,” Kelly said, sitting on the edge of the bed. Her eyes were red, her attire casual jeans, and an out-of-character, wrinkled T-shirt. “He had to fly to Washington to deal with the aftermath of Adam’s takeover of Groom Lake.” Her gaze took on a distant look. “I swear, that day was a nightmare I will not soon forget.”
“That day?” Cassandra queried quickly, her hands going to the steel bars. “How long have I been out? What happened to me?”